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June 14, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear
Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the Bush Adminstration Buried
Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
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What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
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About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
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Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
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Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
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David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
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June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
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Political Hot Air and
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Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
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CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
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Spying
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The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
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Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
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June 14,
2002
In Balata Camp
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
by Starhawk
"What source can you believe in
order to create peace there?" a friend writes when I come
back from Palestine. I have no answer, only this story.
June 1, 2002: I am in Balata refugee
camp in occupied Palestine, where the Israeli Defense Forces
have rounded up four thousand men, leaving the camp to women
and children. The men have offered no resistance, no battle.
The camp is deathly quiet. All the shops are shuttered, all the
windows closed. Women, children and a few old men hide in their
homes. The quiet is shattered by sporadic bursts of gunfire,
bangs and explosions.
All day we have been encountering soldiers
who all look like my brother or cousins or the sons I never had,
so young they are barely more than boys armed with big guns.
We've been standing with the terrified inhabitants as the soldiers
search their houses, walking patients who are afraid to be alone
on the streets to the U.N. Clinic. Earlier in the evening, eight
of our friends were arrested, and we know that we could be caught
at any moment.
It is nearly dark, and Jessica and Melissa
and I are looking for a place to spend the night. Jessica, with
her pale, narrow face, dark eyes and curly hair, could be my
sister or my daughter. Melissa is a bit more punk, androgynous
in her dyed-blond ducktail. We are hurrying through the streets,
worried. We need to be indoors before true dark, and curfew.
"Go into any house," we've been told. "Anyone
will be glad to take you in." But we feel a bit shy.
From a narrow, metal staircase, Samar,
a young woman with a wide, beautiful smile beckons us up. "Welcome,
welcome!" We are given refuge in the three small rooms that
house her family: her mother, big bodied and sad, her small nieces
and nephews, her brother's wife Hanin, round-faced and pale and
six months pregnant. We sit down on big, overstuffed couches.
The women serve us tea. I look around at the pine wood paneling
that adds soft curves and warmth to the concrete, at the porcelain
birds and artificial flowers that decorate a ledge. The ceilings
are carefully painted in simple geometric designs. They have
poured love and care into their home, and it feels like a sanctuary.
Outside we can hear sporadic shooting,
the deep boom of houses being blown up by the soldiers.
But here in these rooms, we are safe, in the tentative sense
that word can be used in this place.
"'Inshallah', "'God willing',
follows every statement of good here or every commitment to a
plan. "Yahoud!" the women say when we hear explosions.
It is the Arabic word for Jew, the word used for the soldiers
of the invading army. It is a word of warning and alarm: don't
go down that alley, out into that street. "Yahoud!"
But no one invades our refuge this night.
We talk and laugh with the women. I have a pocket-sized packet
of Tarot cards, and we read for what the next day will bring.
Samar wants a reading, and then Hanin. I don't much like what
I see in their cards: death, betrayal, sleepless nights of sorrow
and regret. But I can't explain that in Arabic anyway, so I focus
on what I see that is good. "Baby?" Hanin asks. "Babies,
yes," "Boy? Son?" The card of the Sun comes up,
with a small boy-child riding on a white house. "Yes, I
think it is a boy," I say. She shows me the picture of her
first baby, who died at a year and a half.
Around us young men are prowling with
guns, houses are exploding, lives are being shattered. And we
are in an intimate world of women. Hanin brushes my hair, ties
it back in a band to control its wildness. We try to talk about
our lives. We can write down our ages on paper. I am fifty, Hanin
is twenty-three. Jessica and Melissa are twenty-two: all of them
older than most of the soldiers. Samar is seventeen, the children
are eight and ten and the baby is four. I show them pictures
of my family, my garden, my step-grandaughter. I think they understand
that my husband has four daughters but I have none of my own,
and that I am his third wife. I'm not sure they understand that
those wives are sequential, not concurrentbut maybe they do.
The women of this camp are educated,
sophisticated--many we have met throughout the day are professionals,
teachers, nurses, students when the Occupation allows them to
go to school. "Are you Christian?" Hanin finally asks
us at the end of the night. Melissa, Jessica and I look at each
other. All of us are Jewish, and we're not sure what the reaction
will be if we admit it. Jessica speaks for us. "Jewish,"
she says. The women don't understand the word. We try several
variations, but finally are forced to the blunt and dreaded "Yahoud."
"Yahoud!" Hanin says. She gives a little surprised
laugh, looks at the other women. "Beautiful!" And that
is all.
Her welcome to us is undiminished. She
shows me the shower, dresses me in her own flowered nightgown
and robe, and puts me to bed in the empty side of the double
bed she shares with her husband, who has been arrested by the
Yahoud. Mats are brought out for the others. Two of the children
sleep with us. Ahmed, the little four year old boy, snuggles
next to me. He sleeps fiercely, kicking and thrashing in his
dreams, and each time an explosion comes, hurls himself into
my arms. I can't sleep at all. How have I come here, at an age
when I should be home making plum jam and doll clothes for grandchildren,
to be cradling a little Palestinian boy whose sleep is already
shattered by gunshots and shells? I am thinking about the summer
I spent in Israel when I was fifteen, learning Hebrew, working
on a kibbutz, touring every memorial to the Holocaust and every
site of a battle in what we called the War of Independence. I
am thinking of one day when we were brought to the Israel/Lebanon
border. The Israeli side was green, the other side barren and
brown. "You see what we have made of this land," we
were told. "And that...that's what they've done in two thousand
years. Nothing."
I am old enough now to question the world
of assumptions behind that statement, to recognize one of the
prime justifications the colonizers have always used against
the colonized. "They weren't doing anything with the land:
they weren't using it." They are not, somehow, as deserving
as we are, as fully human. They are animals, they hate us. All
of that is shattered by the sound of by Hanin's laugh, called
into question by a small boy squirming and twisting in his sleep.
I lie there in awe at the trust that has been given me, one of
the people of the enemy, put to bed to sleep with the children.
It seems to me, at that moment, that there are indeed powers
greater than the guns I can hear all around me: the power of
Hanin's trust, the power that creates sanctuary, the great surging
compassionate power that overcomes prejudice and hate.
One night later, we again go back to
our family just as dark is falling, together with Linda and Neta,
two other volunteers. We have narrowly escaped a party of soldiers,
but no sooner do we arrive than a troop comes to the door. At
least they have come to the door: we are grateful for that for
all day they have been breaking through people's walls, knocking
out the concrete with sledgehammers, bursting through into rooms
of terrified people to search, or worse, use the house as a thoroughfare,
a safe route that allows them to move through the camp without
venturing into the streets.
We have been in houses turned into surreal
passageways, with directions spray painted on their walls, where
there is no sanctuary because all night long soldiers are passing
back and forth. We come forward to meet these soldiers, to talk
with them and witness what they will do. One of the men, with
owlish glasses, knows Jessica and Melissa: they have had a long
conversation with him standing beside his tank. He is uncomfortable
with his role. Ahmed, the little boy, is terrified of the soldiers.
He cries and screams and points at them, and we try to comfort
him, to carry him away into another room. But he won't go. He
is terrified, but he can't bear to be out of their sight. He
runs toward them crying.
"Take off your helmet," Jessica
tells the soldiers. "Shake hands with him, show him you're
a human being. Help him to be not so afraid." The owlish
soldier takes off his helmet, holds out his hand. Ahmed's sobs
subside. The soldiers file out to search the upstairs. Samar
and Ahmed follow them. Samar holds the little boy up to the owlish
soldier's face, tells him to give the soldier a kiss. She doesn't
want Ahmed to be afraid, to hate. The little boy kisses the soldier,
and the soldier kisses him back, and hands him a small Palestinian
flag.
This is the moment to end this story,
on a high note of hope, to let it be a story of how simple human
warmth, a child's kiss, can for a moment overcome oppression
and hate. But it is a characteristic of the relentless quality
of this occupation that the story doesn't end here.
The soldiers order us all into one room.
They close the door, and begin to search the house. We can hear
banging and crashing and loud thuds against the walls. I am trying
to think of something to sing, to do to distract us, to keep
the spirits of the children up. I cannot think of anything that
makes sense. My voice won1t work. But Neta teaches us a silly
children's song in Arabic. To me, it sounds like: "Babouli
raizh, raizh, babouli jai, Babouli ham melo sucar o shai,"
"The train comes, the train goes, the train is full of sugar
and tea." The children are delighted, and begin to sing.
Hanin and I drum on the tables. The soldiers are throwing things
around in the other room and the children are singing and Ahmed
begins to dance. We put him up on the table and he smiles and
swings his hips and makes us all laugh.
When the soldiers finally leave, we emerge
to examine the damage. Every single object has been pulled off
the walls, out of the closets, thrown in huge piles on the floor.
The couches have been overturned and their bottoms ripped off.
The wood paneling is full of holes knocked into every curve and
corner. Bags of grain have been emptied into the sink. Broken
glass and china covers the floor.
We begin to clean up. Melissa sweeps:
Jessica tries to corral the barefoot children until we can get
the glass off the floor. I help Hanin clear a path in the bedroom,
folding the clothes of her absent husband, hanging up her own
things, finding the secret sexy underwear the soldiers have obviously
examined. By the time it is done, I know every intimate object
of her life. We are a houseful of women: we know how to clean
and restore order.
When the house is back together, Hanin
and Samar and the sister cook. The grandmother is having a high
blood pressure attack: we lay her down on the couch, I bring
her a pillow. She rests. I sit down, utterly exhausted, as Hanin
and the women serve us up a meal. A few china birds are back
on the ledge. The artificial flowers have reappeared. Some of
the loose boards of the paneling have been pushed back. Somehow
once again the house feels like a sanctuary. "You are amazing,"
I tell Hanin. "I am completely exhausted: you're six months
pregnant, it1s your house that has just been trashed, and you1re
able to stand there cooking for all of us." Hanin shrugs.
"For us, this is normal," she says. And this is where
I would like to end this story, celebrating the resilience of
these women, full of faith in their power to renew their lives
again and again. But the story doesn't end here.
The third night. Melissa and Jessica
go back to stay with our family. I am staying with another family
who has asked for support. The soldiers have searched their house
three times, and have promised that they will continue to come
back every night. We are sleeping in our clothes, boots ready.
We get a call. The soldiers have come back to Hanin's house.
Again, they lock everyone in one room.
Again, they search. This time, the soldier who kissed the baby
is not with them. They have some secret intelligence report that
tells them there is something to find, although they have not
found it. They rip the paneling off the walls. They knock holes
in the tiles and the concrete beneath. They smash and destroy,
and when they are done, they piss on the mess they have left.
Nothing has been found, but something
is lost. The sanctuary is destroyed, the house turned into a
wrecking yard. No one kisses these soldiers: no one sings.
When Hanin emerges and sees what they
have done, she goes into shock. She is resilient and strong,
but this assault has gone beyond normal, and she breaks.
She is hyperventilating, her pulse is racing and thready. She
could lose the baby, or even die. Jessica, who is trained as
a Street Medic for actions, informs the soldiers that Hanin needs
immediate medical care. The soldiers are reluctant, "We'll
be done soon," they say. But one is a paramedic, and Melissa
and Jessica are able to make him see the seriousness of the situation.
They allow the two of them to violate curfew, to run through
the dark streets to the clinic, come back with two nurses who
somehow get Hanin and the family into an ambulance and taken
to the hospital.
This story could be worse. Because Jessica
and Melissa were there, Hanin and the baby survive. That is,
after all, why we've come: to make things not quite as bad as
they would be otherwise. But there is no happy ending to this
story, no cheerful resolution. When the soldiers pull out, I
go back to say goodbye to Hanin, who has come back from the hospital.
She is looking dull, depressed: something is broken. I don1t
know if it can be repaired, if she will ever be the same. Her
resilience is gone; her eyes have lost their light. She writes
her name and phone number for me, writes "Hanin love you."
I don't know how the story will ultimately end for her. I still
see in the cards destruction, sleepless nights of anguish, death.
This is not a story of some grand atrocity.
It is a story about normal, about what it1s like to under
an everyday, relentless assault on any sense of safety or sanctuary.
"What was that song about the train?"
I ask Neta after the soldiers are gone. "Didn't you hear?"
she asks me. "The soldiers came and got the old woman, at
one o'clock in the morning, and made her sing the song. I don't
think I'll ever be able to sing it again."
"What source can you believe in
order to create peace there?" a friend writes. I have no
answer. Every song is tainted; every story goes on too long and
turns nasty. A boy whose baby dreams are disturbed by gunfire
kisses a soldier. A soldier kisses a boy, and then destroys his
home. Or maybe he simply stands by as others do the destruction,
in silence, that same silence too many of us have kept for too
long. And if there are forces that can nurture peace they must
first create an uproar, a vast breaking of silence, a refusal
to stand by as the boot stomps down.
Starhawk
can be reached through her website: http://www.starhawk.org
copyright (C) Starhawk 2002
Today's
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Tom Turnipseed
The Fear
Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
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